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Review:10228 Haunted House/CzechMate
The really big set This is the 15th largest LEGO set of all time, at 2064 pieces, and I am lucky enough to own it. When all of the pics were released of this, I went crazy to try and get this set, anyway I could, so I could complete my collection of all MF sets, including polybags and win my bet with CGCJ, and own a large, very large set for the first ever time. There is a lot to like about this set, just looking at pictures, you get 2 exclusive minifigures, the Zombies Butler, and the Zombie Chef, who I will call "Rupert" for this review. The design, and architecture of this house is amazing, and the incredible detailing on every side of the house, from brick-brick pieces on house, to the small cheese slopes on the steps on the front - every detailed is noticed in the design. The house is mostly sand green pieces, which looks great - and brick-brick-brick yellow pieces, as if the paint was wearing out. One of the things which made this a definite for me was the Zombie Chef, and the kitchen, it looks great. Anyway, enough rambling - onto the review! (that is, if any of you even read my reviews) The Box The box is massive, bigger than the Vampyre Castle, and, heaps bigger than the Swamp Creatures one :P. Having 2064 pieces in one box is quite spectacular, considering this is just a toy. The box can barely fit on a desk chair, and has the world's biggest punch-holes :P. I like how Lord Vampyre is in a pose that just says "ta-da!". The back of the box shows the house when open, and all of the "play features" and items inside the house. There is only one actual feature in the set, which I'll describe in the "The Set" part of the review. The Minifigures You get six minifigures with this set, two of which are exclusive, and that seems about right for a set of this size. All of the figures are incredibly detailed, as well. I noticed Lord V's cape was much easier to put on, and it didn't flip as much, which is good have, as the others flopped to one side more. Lord Vampyre One of the best figures released in 2012 comes back for a third appearance, inside his large house, in his normal variant. He has a nice Glow in the dark head, which features in all of his appearances. I like this vampire in terms of clothes, to his predecessors. The first seems more Vampirific (thank you, Berrybrick, all credit goes to you :P). See his review of 9464 for his thoughts on the vampires. Lord's costume is ultimately better than the others, but his head is too cartoony. His slightly older one from Series 2 seems to happy though, the Studios one seems more like a blood loving, serial killer, scary vampire, to me. The new hairpiece used from 2010 onwards is good, more slick and easy to use. Lord's GiD face is good, but it is a PAIN to get off, or even to swerve to his menacing second face. The capes they use these days for vampires are always screwed up by the time you get them on the figure, you have to bend the cape, then put it in half and try and put it on, and it always ends up making the collar part look terrible. However, if you want the cape, you have to get this set. Some nice back printing, which reused for the Zombie Butler in the same set here. I just thought I'd point out that you should pronounce his name "Vam-peer", as the "y" is meant to make a "peer" sound. Vampyre's Bride What a minifigure. She is wrongly accused of having the same torso as Elizabeth Swann, who has a completely different print, however they share the same hairpiece, but not hair colour. A great hairpiece, which is the best choice, even though some other hairpieces wouldn't be bad. I'd really like it if she had a highlight printed in her hair, like a shade of purple or white. Anyway, her head is nice, but like her hubby, her head is almost impossible to take of without doing damage to the figure. If you get this set, put her face onto her smiley face instead of the other, if you don't, you'll have to manage the pain of the damage you'll cause to the figure :S. I really like the ripped dress design, which suits her really well, the only negative is there is a lot of peach colour around the chest area, which should be white. Nice back printing too, like most other MF figures. This is her second appearance in the theme, and fits in well with this set. Ghosts The ghost is a very good figure for something so simple. The new "sheet" piece. Very well designed. It's detail on it is really, really good. The back has a, I'm not too sure how to explain it, it's kinda like a twirled-end to think it's floating or something, I dunno, I'm not great at words. The ghost DOES glow in the dark, and really, really well, too. I went into my extra-dark bedroom and put the lights off (after I'd charged the ghost in natural light for about 5 minutes), it glowed really well, and stayed glowing for about 30 minutes. The "no legs" looks very good, and I'm pretty sure it'd be hard to have a sheet over your head and not trip-over your legs/feet :P. It uses a normal 1x2 brick, and a 2x1 plate op top of it, so the piece does not get stuck on the baseplate. It's a good idea to include 2 of these ghosts in the set, and works particularly well in the attic, or holding onto the railing on the house. Zombie Butler Based off The Addams Family character, Lurch, this minifigure is one of the best in the theme for his printings. Whenever I look at him, I think "You raaannggggg?" (only true fans will understand that). My only complaint about him is his head doesn't fit in exactly well, like with Batman and the jet-ski polybag, or The Swamp Creature in 9461, it goes over his eyes, because it obviously wasn't molded as well as The Monster's from the set 9466, or even the Series 4 collectible minifigure from back in 2011 (I think?). His torso is a nice print, and looks well with him. His expression is perfect - a butler in a light-ish grey colour, looking like he's sick of his job :P. I really like this figure, despite the flaw with the head piece. But it seems I am a tad unlucky with that type of stuff. Zombie Chef (Rupert) I love this minifigure, such an original idea, and works perfectly with this set. If you're wondering why I called him Rupert - it's because it just suits him, a zombie, who also cooks, and Rupert sounding old-ish, to me, it works. I love how he has the normal chef hat, which hasn't appeared for years, and how it seems he has blood on his chef outfit, either that, or he is very bad with tomato sauce :-P. I'm not too sure about the plain legs, it'd be nice for his outfit to extend onto his legs. The Build Each part of the house, well, every couple of bags takes from 45 minutes, to 2 hours. The first bag is rather quick, the second gets slower, the third level, is by far the longest one, at 2 hours to build. It's also quite an interesting and challenging build. It's very different for me, to be building from bottom to top, especially as I don't build many actual structures, especially not like this set. The first level is fairly easy, but you need to be careful where you put a piece, as one misplaced piece, may come back to haunt you later on in the build. Building the front of the house was annoying, the front has 4 zombie heads which make it very hard to put onto the plate above it, and it is a very tricky part to build. I originally wanted to scrap the zombie heads, but I realised I don't really have many zombie bodies to put them on. The Set Onto the actual set, I suppose. The set's design is great, but does take awhile to actually know which part you are building. I'll go from top to bottom, starting off with the nicely designed gate. The Gate It's rather larger than I expected, but still very nice. They use two different versions of the ladder piece on both sides, which looks very nice, and a good design, which I'm sure many mockers have done before, or in some shape or form. It looks nice, but it is rather too long, and is a little bit fragile, and very floppy, and doesn't really need to be as long as it has been designed. I would to see it more symmetrical, as well. It isn't fully, as there is one stud on each side of it, which looks a little bid odd to me. It works with the house, but too long. The first floor You start off with building base of the house. which isn't as simple as you'd have thought. You notice the details well when building, and they work well. The first floor is very simple, as all you do is add the walls, and the accessories, which you build as the first thing, after the minifigures, so you can put the stuff wherever you like, I suppose. The kitchen is the main highlight of this floor for the inside, with very nice broken tile design, and a window without glass. You build enough windows in the house that you know how to build them off by heart by at least the third, or fourth window. There is a small door on the side of the kitchen to the "outside world" which is a nice design, but you have to place everything exactly right, or else, like I said before, it will come back to haunt you (sorry, I couldn't resist saying it :P). The other side is fairly plain, and has a swing-out fireplace, but that just seems so odd to me, with the fact it can't extend fully, due to the swinging pieces in the fireplace, which disallow much movement to be straight. There is some room for the grandfather clock from 30201 Ghost Polybag to fit. I presume that is what the polybag is made for, as it fits in snug. The front veranda is a nice design, but has one of the most annoying parts to build, the zombie head pillars, like I said above, it is very hard to get the pieces to clutch together. That is my main problem with the first level of the Haunted House. Oh, as you build, you also make a brick-built stair-case, which is heaps better than the one piece stair case they have used before. I'm going to guess there are four hundred or so pieces in the first floor. You also notice the chimney build starting - which you build through all three floors, and even the roof. The chimney is prominently light grey brick-brick pieces, and "log" pieces. The Second Floor You start off with building the walls, again. There is some nice details in this second floor, and this is the first level with the brick-yellow brick brick pieces. One thing I don't like too much is how squeezed in some of the items are. The sand green doesn't make it work though. A few bits of grey, and many, many windows - how many windows do you need? I like their designs, but there is at least 10 windows. The main area as you get up the stairs is a small "office" room, which has the small desk, a chair, and a small platform for the quill, which is made of a feather piece - nice idea there. There is a lot of room on the second floor on this half - you'd have thought they'd put a few more details, or objects. On one of the walls is a sticker, which has a photo of The Werewolf, who makes a cameo in this set, as well as The Mummy, Zombie Bride, The Monster, and a picture of Lord Vampyre. The other side has four of the five pictures, and a broken bed, which is an interesting build. Above that is an interesting feature - a dead moose skeleton head - which I suppose is nice - but a little odd for a kid's toy. There are two gold lamps on each side of it, and they look very well made, and could be reused for something, ideally mocs. On the ground is a cupboard, which is empty, but can hold the heart inside the jar, which is the same as the heart as in the Pirates of the Caribbean sets, from 2011. There is another "piece in side the case" thing in the attic, which is home to most of the extra stuff. This build is around an hour-ish, so not too long. You can put around 3 or 4 figures in this floor, which is good. There is heaps of sand green elements on this floor, there are 94 1x1 sand green bricks in this set, so I'm going to guess there are around 150-ish sand green pieces. The Attic This is the longest, hardest, and definitely most annoying part of the house to build. You start off with the rather complicated build of the attic stairs, quite complicated, and you need to look carefully when building, to get it out, you pull out a small technic piece in the chimney to let it out, then you unfold the piece.. That took me 10 minutes build, and five of those minutes was finding the pieces - there's about 500-600 pieces in the attic - so you have a very large pile of pieces, I'd recommend organising the pieces from the bags into small piles - so you know where to look for a piece. There's heaps of special 2x1 "log" style pieces in this, as pillars tp hold the roof up. There are maybe 6 windows on this floor, the front one looks best out of all of them, in my opinion. It looks good from the outside with the black pieces, too have a very attic-y look. The shape of the house is very similar to the Town Hall, released earlier in 2012. It's a very long build this one, maybe 2 or 3 hours in total? Anyways, on the inside before you put the stuff in, looks very open, and an ideal place to put the two ghosts, as you know, ghost in the attic stuff... Anyway... there is a lot of pieces, you many not realise from the pictures, but there is heaps. Once you've finished the house, you put in the boxes of stuff like: Boxes of newspaper stackers - a nice detail, a basket which consists of a knight's helmet, a flintlock rifle, a jar with a bone in it, a chest with a top hat, quite a few glasses, more boxes, etc. The top of the house is pretty plain, not too much to say about the rest of it, so this is basically the end of the review, if you are even reading this. Overall This is a great set, and with great playability, some very nice accessories, rare pieces, only a few stickers, but, I'd prefer printed pieces, of course, like any other LEGO fan. There is some great details in this set, and a very challenging, interesting build, so very much recommended, even if the price tag is triple digits, a great set, ideal for the Monster Fighters fans, if the price is too high for you - just take a punt, and you'll enjoy every part of this set, exclusive minifigures, great design, what else is there to say about this set? Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for reviews on the Swarm Interceptor, The Zombies, and Razcal's Glider! - Czech